I swear I am not taking a cut from Chad Robertson (:P), I guess the formulas in the book just really works for me, so I keep going back for more. As I have mentioned before, it's not a cover-all bread book like "BBA" or "Bread", it only has a handful of base formulas (4 for lean breads to be exact), then some variations. Since I have posted about the Basic Country Bread and WW Country Bread, I am not going to post formula for this Semonlina loaf just to be fair to the author(s). if you like the breads, I think it's a book worth buying.

The procedure is similar to the other two breads, at 80%+ hydration, I am not suprised about the open crumb, but I was pleasantly surprised by the flavor combo - fennel seeds and black seame, both in the dough and on the crust, so frangrant! Both of those two seeds have such strong aroma on their own, I never thought they would mingle so well together! I was toasting them together before mixing into the dough, such heavenly smel! I knew it would be a winner then.

Open and colorful crumb, and trust me, it's an explosion of flavors in the mouth.

Recently bought a triangle proofing basket from here, I like the result. BTW, the basket is small, enough for 1lb dough probably. However, I did half the recipe this time since DH is out of town, so I had two 1lb loaves, one triangle and one oval, rather than the usual 2X 2lb loaves. I think it's actually better to shape into smaller loaves for two reasons:

1. High hydration dough tend to spread a bit on baking stone (Chad recommend to bake in a cast-iron pot thingy that I don't have), but it's much less noticable with smaller loaves;

2. The seeds on the crust came out just right after 35min in the oven, any longer, they would get burned a little, which happened to my bigger loaves before.

Last time, Sylvia wanted to see how my bastkets are floured, here's a picture of the oval one after being dusted with AP+rice flour - see the little bit of flour gathered in the left? I dumped those out after.

Needless to say, I will make this again, maybe try the other flavor variation in the book to combine fennel and raisin with semolina.

I did put the dough at room temp for about an hour before baking, but it's not about "bring to room temp", it's about "letting the dough to rise to the appropriate point". That "appropriate" point means it has expanded a little during proofing, but still has some strength left for ovenspring, you sort of have to judge by experience. Often times, after shaping, I immediately put the dough in the fridge to retard, so by the time I take it out it may need some more proofing, which is why I leave it at room temp for a while. If for some reason, it has proofed to the appropriate point when I took it out of the fridge, I would just bake it immediately, with no warm up.

Thank you for the floured basket photo! The basket coils seem to dampen a little after an overnight in bags in my frig. and if I don't use enough flour/riceflour, the dough sticks. I've been trying less flour/riceflour it's not to bad, but still a little sticking.

I think it's a good idea about the recipe posts and book purchase, especially since there isn't that many formula's in the book.

I was thinking that the air would dry out the dough going into the coils of the basket if the whole basket wasn't put in a bag...maybe that's the problem, to much moisture....the wood on my baskets is very damp after the loaves come out and the flour also left hardens because of the moisture, and is hard to clean...that sounds like the problem...thanks, TxFarmer : )

1. My recent brotform purchases are from http://fantes.com/brotforms.html . The smallest ones would accomodate 1lb loaves, I haven't seen anything smaller than that.

2. I use old fashioned drug store single or double edged shaving blades to score. They are cheap enough to just discard when not sharp enough. I also have a couple of lame (specialty scoring knife) from kingarthurflour.com, but those got dull and I can't replace the blade.

Txfarmer, after I looked into the amazon website for that part of the recipe one could see, and read all of your notes, all of a sudden a nagging suspicion entered my mind.

I went to look at my overcrowded book shelves - and there it was: a copy of "Tartine" that I bought with a bunch of other books some time ago, and never opened so far. A severe case of baking book overload - or early onset Alzheimer?

Anyway, this bread will be my next "private" bread, after I bake my Pane Sicilianos, Pains a l'Anciennes and Multigrain Pitas for tomorrow's sale.

I have two copies of Dan lepard's "A handmade loaf" for the same reason - completely forgot that I had one already. To make it worse, at any given time, I can only to seem find one of the two, the other two is always hiding in unexpected places. :P

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